Shūichi Shigeno's Initial D car-racing manga is inspiring an anime film, Shin Gekijō-ban Initial D (New Initial D the Movie), next summer. The manga's final battles will also be adapted into a new anime series called Final Stage. The "Young Magazine Dai Art Genga-ten 2013" event, which will run at Tokyo's Shibuya Hikarie complex starting July 26, will screen early footage from the film.

The manga follows Takumi Fujiwara, a high school boy with a natural talent for driving, in his racing pursuits on the public highways. The manga debuted in 1995, and Kodansha published the 46th book volume in January. The manga inspired several television anime series (including the Fifth Stage that just ran last year), a live-action film, several original video anime projects, and a successful game line.

This year's 34th issue Kodansha's Young Magazine is revealing on Monday that Shūichi Shigeno will end the manga in the following issue on July 29. The manga has been running for 18 years in the magazine, and Shigeno had revealed in March that he was heading toward the manga's finale.

Oh I can't wait to see it. I'm sad that it's going to end, but yet happy that it's going to end. At this point, it's been so long, that I'm waiting for the story to end. I'll probably have to rewatch it again before final stage comes out.

Nice symbolism there. Although the race was intense as usual, I thought these episodes were a bit...eh underwhelming in general. It's not that they were bad or anything but kinda lacked what I had hoped for.